There Is Only Here (My Mother Thinks of Diebenkorn in San Francisco), by Valarie Hastings

There Is Only Here (My Mother Thinks of Diebenkorn in San Francisco)
 
I, I thought, yes, I. And turned to the windows at dusk, so different from
the void they tell you it will be, the windows’ leaded glass pulling blades 
 
of Bay light deep inside themselves, almost like holy communion or 
the warmth of wine filling the glove of the throat like a toast. I always 
 
wondered why antebellum homes shrouded their mirrors in black gauze
upon the death of a beloved. It nearly startled me back from a dead sleep 
 
the first time I looked into a mirror and saw absolutely nothing, not even 
the thinnest cigarette slip of my face, me, repackaged into seamless 
 
energy blazing invisibly in the rooms where I last lived, only the dog
thwacking his tail on the door to greet me. My daughter. My only 
 
daughter is sitting on the edge of a bed as my hand strokes her back as
my lips kiss her hair. She collects the fenestrations of the night, rolls 
 
them into the blue ball of the living, asks, Where are you? Where, here,
looking South from the windows at dusk, the world spills itself open 
 
like a Diebenkorn bedecked in planes of light.   
 
Valarie Hastings 
 
Valarie Hastings is the 2020 winner of the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, finalist for the 2023 Laura Boss prize, and recipient of an Honorable Mention for the 2020 Allen Ginsberg Award. She has published her poetry in more than a dozen literary journals including Innisfree, Gyroscope, and Literary Mama.  Her first collection of poetry, Searching for Dandelion Greens, came out in 2021, with Garden Oak Press. She currently serves as Director of Judges for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize.